An Accidental Goddess Read online

  Obviously, neither his rank nor his tone had managed to intimidate her. He tried to keep the frown off his face. She wasn’t military. His infamous frown would be wasted on her. “Where were you headed?”

  “The Ziami Quadrant.”

  “Ziami?” In a huntership as powerful as the Vedritor, that would be four months and two jumpgates. In a small freighter like hers, that could take eight months, maybe a year, if the ion storms kicked in around the Sultana Drifts again. What in hell would a young woman be doing in that godsforsaken quadrant? Cirrus was bad enough.

  “My family runs a depot in Ziami. When we trade here, we run our ships under a Khalaran Kemmon flag. I was headed home, running empty. I’d already archived my Confed clearances. However, if my ship’s not too damaged, I should be able to pull them up for you.”

  That sounded reasonable. But Mack rarely accepted reasonable, especially in explanations without documentation that might concern one of the more volatile Khalaran states, such as one of the rim Kemmons. “Which Kemmon do you trade with?”

  She shrugged. “Depends on the commodity and the destination.”

  “No, Captain. This run.”

  “Not the Fav.”

  “The Fav’lhir and their Kemmons haven’t plagued us for over three hundred years, thank the Lady. That wasn’t my question.” Yet in a way, it was. He’d watched her face when she’d answered, noted the dislike when she’d said the name of the longtime enemy of the Khalar. Not that the emotion couldn’t be a sham. But she didn’t strike him as a Fav’lhir agent. Plus, he’d seen her ship. That definitely wasn’t up to Fav standards.

  “I had a transfer for a Kemmon–Drin tri-hauler,” she said after a long moment. “Then I had some personal business to take care of. I may have overstayed my clearances.”

  So that was it. He relaxed slightly, matching a fact to his suspicious feeling. Now he knew why she’d avoided answering his questions. Not quite a smuggler. A rim trader—and that’s what he was sure she was—could have any type of interesting “personal business,” from a genuine love affair to an illegal trade in drugs and weapons. Or, more likely, rune stones. Life crystals. Most of which were probably fakes but willingly snatched up in the market, as anything even remotely connected with the Tridivinian gods, or Lady Kiasidira, always was.

  “When do you intend to release her, Doc?”

  “I want another scan of her concussion. An hour.”

  “Your ship’s in a repair bay on D11-South, Captain.” He tried to ignore the color of her eyes, the softness of her mouth, as she leaned against the diag bed’s pillows. Straightening his shoulders, he reminded himself that he wasn’t in sick bay to notice such things. “You can show me those Drin clearances in one hour.”

  She seemed about to say something, but then only nodded and smiled.

  The exam-room door opened completely this time. He took it as a signal that his departure was advisable, as well as an omen to try the lifts. Either way, he had to get out of her exam room before the decidedly unprofessional imagination he didn’t have got the best of him.

  Ops Command 2 was on Upper6-North. Or rather, it was being slowly integrated back into its rightful section, as Mack viewed it, of Upper6-North. Eventually, his office would be there as well. The previous administrators of Cirrus had firmly declared their priorities when they’d appropriated that square footage, as well as a large portion of ops, and transformed the space into a casino gaming parlor. One of his first projects had been the reclamation of that space back to a more functional—at least in his opinion—utilization.

  For now he could deal with his temporary office. Getting a real operations and command center running was more important. The Rim Gate Project would depend on them.

  He headed for the left side of ops’ lowest level. A stocky red-haired woman monitoring enviro readouts glanced his way briefly and nodded. She was one of the station’s civilian techies, in a wrinkled, orange-colored jumpsuit that showed no insignia. Another orange-jumpsuited man leaned over an engineering console beyond her. He was deep in argument with someone on station intercom.

  Tobias was at the long communications console, his muscular frame shoved into a chair, his thick fingers moving quickly over the screen pads. Like Janek, Fitch Tobias was a former Vedritor officer, one of nine who’d volunteered to follow Rynan “Make It Right” Makarian to Cirrus One. Ten Fleet officers from the Vedri plus one hundred seventy-five from other Fleet ships and postings comprised Mack’s current staff, with Tobias as his second-in-command. One hundred eighty-five of his people versus five hundred fifty—give or take a couple dozen illegals—longtime residents of Cirrus. And their parrots.

  That his staff was outnumbered by an eclectic, somewhat eccentric civilian population was a fact Mack rarely forgot. But that wasn’t his only problem. He rested one hip against the comm console, crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Still working on the avian invaders, sir,” Tobias said, without raising his close-shaved head.

  “I’m not here about the parrots. I’ve been trying to make some sense out of this past week’s PSLs.” Especially the ones in the Runemist sector. That’s where his patrols had found the intriguing Gillaine Davré. Who occupied his thoughts at the moment only because of her ship’s location in Runemist, of course.

  Tobias shoved his heel down on the chair’s deck-lock release. He pushed the chair to his right, slid down the track to the empty station at the secondary sensor screens. Fleet HQ on Cirrus had yet to officially open for business. Stations were understaffed. Everyone, including Mack, did double duty or more.

  “This quadrant’s known for unreliable perimeter sensor logs. Sir,” he said when Mack caught up with him.

  “Agreed, Lieutenant. But this unreliable data was a bit too regular. Plus it came out of Runemist. If someone uncreative wanted to create sham unreliable data there, that’s probably what it would look like.”

  “Like this, sir?” Tobias’s screen flickered to life.

  Mack leaned his palms on the edge of the console. “Like that.”

  The screens in ops were better than the hastily constructed setup in his temporary office. They were on a direct link to the main databanks. His office, well . . . the parrots soaring up and down the atrium core were probably a more effective means of data transport than what he worked with.

  He saw now what had been missing from the data on his screen. And didn’t at all like what he saw.

  The toe of his boot found the deck-lock tab at the base of Tobias’s chair. He unlocked it. “Get me the Vedri on high-priority scramble.”

  Tobias pushed the chair to his left, sailed back to communications. “Hailing.”

  “I’ll take it on your screen when you’ve reached her.”

  It took ten minutes—he absently timed it on ops’ main clock—before Iona Cardiff’s face flickered onto the screen. “Vedritor. Comm Officer Cardiff.”

  Cardiff was second shift. At least, she had been four months ago. He didn’t think the Vedri’s new captain, his former first officer, would have changed things that quickly.

  He was right.

  “Transferring your call to Captain Adler’s office right now, sir.”

  “Admiral. What can I do for you?” Steffan Adler was a short, wiry man whose light blue eyes were a contrast to his swarthy complexion. A few years older than Mack, Adler had learned—in the seven years they’d served together—that Rynan Makarian rarely made social calls. Mack could see Adler’s hand poised over an open datapad, ready to take notes.

  “I’ve got PSLs out of Runemist I don’t like. We have three patrol ships posted in that sector. Need you to take a closer look.”

  “What do you think I might find?”

  “Someone, or something, that shouldn’t be there—and is doing a barely passable job of covering their tracks.”

  “Smugglers?” Adler’s pale eyes narrowed.

  “That’s my best guess. Patrol may have brought in one of their friends earlier. Says her n
ame’s Davré.” Mack permitted his imagination to briefly resurrect Gillaine Davré’s image. But only because he was discussing her in a professional manner.

  “What was she running?”

  “It appears she might have been running from someone. Her ship had considerable damage to the starboard side. She’s sitting in sick bay right now.”

  “Is her ship in our files?”

  “I won’t know until I access her clearances. Her ship was in full shutdown when we towed her in a few hours ago. We have no ID on it, or her. But she was found not far from my suspicious PSLs.”

  Adler glanced down at his console. “Receiving your data now, sir. We’re on it. I’ll report back as soon as we’re in range.”

  The screen flickered to black, then filled with Cirrus One’s logo.

  There were fifteen minutes yet before Janek would release Davré from sick bay. Mack still had work to do before he met with her. He took ops’ internal stairway up to Ops Main and the primary scanner console.

  Stationmaster Johnna Hebbs’s dark scowl greeted him as he unlocked an empty chair and slid it to an open scanner station. She leaned against the command sling, watching him with undisguised disdain. Amazing how this woman could be so beautiful yet so unattractive at the same time.

  Hebbs was old guard, second in command when Stationmaster Quigley had controlled Cirrus One for the Cirrus Quadrant Port Authority. The Port Authority was a branch of the Khalaran Department of Commerce and not known for its enthusiasm for the Khalaran military. But in this instance, CQPA agreed with Fleet that Quigley—and his gambling operation—had to go. They insisted, however, that Mack retain Hebbs as stationmaster because she knew Cirrus and because she was popular with stationers. The tall brunette was popular with male stationers, Mack had learned. Female stationers knew better than to cross her.

  Mack acknowledged the stationmaster’s tight nod with one of his own, then turned his attention to the console. He brought up the logs again. Frowned. Something was definitely going on in Runemist and, with the Rim Gate Project about to launch, this was a time he could least afford interruptions. Three jumps out from the major space lanes, the Cirrus Quadrant was too remote for such unusual activity. The Runemist sector, with no habitable worlds and only a few derelict miners’ rafts, even more so.

  No one came through Runemist unless she had a damned good reason. She was either looking for trouble, or running from it.

  The intriguing Captain Gillaine Davré had better be prepared with some very good answers to his questions and documentation to back it all up. Or else Mack intended to make sure her troubles in Runemist would be the least of her problems.

  After all, she’d just added to his.

  2

  Her ship looked terrible. But then, that had been Simon’s intention. Gillie walked in silence by Admiral Makarian’s side as he inspected the exterior of the starfreighter. Four loading bays—two starboard, two port—gave the stern a bulbous silhouette. Main rampway and airlock were just aft of the bridge. By all appearances, a common Rondalaise-class short-hauler, a teardrop shape of matte gray and black metal platings, one of thousands out there.

  At least, that’s what the passing Khalaran patrol ship’s files had revealed to Simon while their ship had been cloaked and she’d been on the floor, unconscious. Thank the gods the cloaking function hadn’t been damaged by the Fav’lhir fightercraft.

  And thank the gods that Simon had realized long before she did, that they were not only somewhere they didn’t belong, but somewhen.

  It had been left to her to figure out the rest of the bad news.

  “How many ships did you say fired on you?” The admiral’s dark eyes narrowed as he examined the large blackened area of hull plating forward of the starboard bay door.

  “Two, sir.” She repeated what Simon had felt was reasonable, based on what he could draw from this station’s tactical databanks. “But I never got a visual. And I don’t know what my logs will show.”

  “Then let’s find out.”

  Admiral Makarian was not happy. Gillie didn’t need her telepathic senses to figure that out. It was in the tension in his broad shoulders, in the way the tall man moved like a jungle pantrelon, poised to kill.

  He did remind her of a pantrelon, with his dark hair and eyes, his black uniform accenting his sleekly muscled body. Pure Khalar, and definitely attractive. His people had changed little in three hundred and some-odd years. Except to become a little less warlike, a little more tolerant than she remembered them. And a lot less careful.

  Though Makarian might be the exception.

  It’s your fault.

  Simon’s teasing comment reached her as she palmed open the ship’s main hatch. He found the temple, and her attendant goddesshood, amusing. She didn’t.

  It’s not my fault! She could feel Makarian’s breath on her hair, the heat from his body brushing hers as the hatch slid open. He didn’t trust her more than five inches away from him.

  The Holy Guidelines of the Goddess Kiasidira—

  We’re all Tridivinians. There is no Goddess Kiasidira and you damned well know it!

  My Lady . . .

  Stuff a sock in it, Simon. I don’t have time for that right now.

  The small bridge was appropriately disheveled. She sent Simon a mental nod of appreciation. She’d been out cold while he’d altered the ship into something suitable for this situation, place, and time. And done a damned good job of it.

  Gillie slid into the pilot’s chair, dusted some debris from the console in front of her. It was her first look at Simon’s rendition, but she’d helmed a variety of starships most of her adult life. She let her fingers play over the touchpads, knowing the pads wouldn’t respond right away. They weren’t supposed to. Not until she and Simon could figure out who they were supposed to be and provide the wary admiral with information that would make him leave them alone. They needed privacy to effect the repairs.

  She let out what she hoped was a convincing sigh of frustration. “Systems aren’t responding.”

  Makarian leaned around her, repeated her sequence on the console. Tried two more. The screens before them flickered, then died.

  “I’ll need some time to work on her system synchs,” she told him.

  He took the copilot’s seat next to her. “Don’t try to play games with me, Captain. You won’t succeed.”

  She swiveled to face him. “Sir?” Had she let something slip? Did he suspect the truth?

  “This ship’s on lockout. Yes, that’s a safety measure to prevent hijackings. But there’s not a smuggler I’ve boarded who didn’t have his ship rigged to mimic a safety lockout, just to keep Fleet from accessing his files. And I’ve opened every one.”

  He leaned his elbows on his knees, his narrowed eyes sending a clear warning. And a clear message that he thought she was a smuggler. Not a goddess. She let out a slow sigh of relief as he continued, “You have two choices. We can do this the easy way, and you unlock those files now. Or we can do it the hard way. And you’ll face not only smuggling charges, but obstruction of an investigation and any other charge I can throw at you while I’m unscrambling your codes. And unscramble them I will.”

  I think he likes you.

  Shut up, Simon.

  She put on her most conciliatory expression. “I assure you, Admiral, there’s no deliberate obstruction on my part.” Well, not for the reasons he thought, anyway. “My ship was damaged. Send someone belowdecks to verify that while I try to realign my databanks, if you want. Only make sure they’re willing to help and not just be decorative. I’ve a lot of work just to get this ship operative again. The sooner I do, the sooner my existence here will cease to be a problem for both of us.”

  “Anxious to get home?”

  Home wasn’t a possibility. Home had ceased to exist, three hundred forty-two years ago. The best she could hope for was to get back to Raheiran space as quickly as possible and leave the erroneous legend of the Lady Goddess Kiasidira far behind her.
However, Simon was in no condition to handle the complexities, and stresses, of transiting the Rift right now. His initial three-week estimate might have been overly optimistic. “I’m anxious to be somewhere my every move’s not questioned.”

  One dark eyebrow lifted slightly. “Open those files.”

  “I can’t.” Simon hadn’t finished constructing them. She sure as hell wasn’t going to show him her real logs. The damned Khalar would probably deem them sacred texts or some such nonsense. “I need time.”

  He sighed. His disappointment filtered over her. She pulled her telepathic field in more tightly. It was one thing to prudently monitor the enemy. It was totally another to let his emotions become a distraction.

  I told you. I think he likes you.

  “The hard way, then, is it?” Makarian shoved himself to his feet.

  “Admiral Makarian.” She rose as well. In the small confines of the bridge, they should have been nose to nose. They weren’t. They were her nose to his chest. Gillie tamped down her irritation. His size gave him the obvious advantage in an intimidation contest.

  But only the obvious. To reveal the unobvious would cause more problems than she was willing to deal with.

  She let her arms rise and fall to her sides in a gesture of exasperation. It wasn’t totally feigned. How much longer do you need, Simon?

  A few hours, at most. I’m still not functioning at full capacity. And this station’s databanks are singularly disorganized.

  He wants to see something now.

  Those new trick shots of yours at billiards are quite impressive.

  Simon!

  “Willing to cooperate, Captain Davré?” Makarian’s deep voice was a low rumble.

  Simon, give me something.

  I snagged a block of shipping manifests. They’re not perfect. By the time you take him belowdecks, I might have them passable.

  Lock him out of everything but that, then. Gillie gestured toward the bridge hatchway. “My databanks are yours, Admiral. I’ve nothing to hide.” She prayed she had something believable to show him.